Installation

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Intended article audience: players, general users

Operating Systems supported =

  • Windows (2000/XP/Vista/Win7)
  • Linux

Downloading

You can either:

See below for system specific instructions.

Install on Windows

You can also download a torrent of TDM from here: https://thepiratebay.sx/torrent/9024163. This puts you directly at step 6, below

1. Create a folder anywhere you like named "darkmod". Saved games will not load properly if you call it anything else.

2. Download the TDM Updater

3. Extract the tdm_update.exe from the downloaded ZIP and copy it into your darkmod directory.

4. Run tdm_update.exe. The installer will connect to one of our download mirrors and start the download process.

5. Be patient and wait. The download weighs > 2 GB and will probably take a while.

6. After installation, you’ll find an executable TheDarkMod.exe in your darkmod folder. Use this to start The Dark Mod.

Prerequisites

General

At a minimum, you'll need a machine which is capable of running the Doom 3 game on comfortably high settings. The team recommends adding more RAM and a bit more CPU to the basic requirements, however, otherwise running the larger maps will be difficult.

Hard Disk Space

A rough estimate of how disk space required is 3-4gb. As TDM is under continual development this is likely to increase slowly over time.
Breakdown of the estimate:
  • For the base TDM package you need around 2 GB.
  • Plus a variable amount of space you need for downloaded FM packages
  • ... and a variable amount of space for screenshots, savegames, etc.
  • FM's (Fan Mission) sizes vary as they depends on the amount of custom content(models, textures etc) the FM author is packing in. Usually FMs are very small, if they're using the stock TDM content (1 to 10 MB). FM's with large amounts of custom content can be quite large (20-60mb+), all content however is pre-compressed. For more information please see Fan Missions for The_ Dark Mod.
  • Savegames vary in size, they can be a few MB per save depending on the size of the FM.
  • Screenshots depend on the screen resolution you're using (~2 MB per shot).

References

See the article Known System Configurations for a (hopefully growing) collection of system configurations and the corresponding user feedback.

Troubleshooting the application

The thedarkmod executable will generate a small logfile tdmlauncher.log each time it is invoked. The log file is located right next to the executable and might give some useful insight if the game fails to load.

First Startup

  • Please take your time to read through The Dark Mod Gameplay article to get familiar with the game.
  • TDM ships with a Training Mission which is designed to introduce you to TDM gameplay. You should start this mission first even if you've played stealth games before.
  • Adjust the settings in the menus, like screen resolution and gameplay settings.
  • See also the Performance Tweaks article to make TDM run a little bit faster if you're on a lower end machine.
  • If you encounter a problem please check the FAQ and failing that leave a post in the TDM Support forum.

Installing and Running Fan Missions

Fan Missions can be downloaded from inside the TDM menu. Go to "New Mission" and click on "Get new missions".

Alternatively, you can go to www.thedarkmod.com to get hold of mission packages available for The Dark Mod. Each FM is contained in a PK4 file, which contains all the files necessary to run the mission. Sometimes missions also have an optional _l10n.pk4 file; this contains the content for all other languages than English.

See the full article Installing and Running Fan Missions for a detailed explanation.

See also